Privacy Policy

Effective date: 25 May 2018

Introduction

Webb Henderson is an international legal practice with offices in Sydney, Auckland and Singapore. We are committed to protecting your privacy in all communications, engagements and activities and all other aspects of our relationship with you.

This Privacy Policy explains:

what information we may collect about you;

how we may use and disclose that information; and

your rights in relation to your personal information.

We may need to update this Privacy Policy in the future to account of changes in the law and international information governance practices. Any significant changes to our Privacy Policy will be notified through our website.

Security

We take significant steps to keep your personal information confidential and secure. We take appropriate measures to do so in accordance with our procedures covering the storage, access and disclosure of information.

When do we collect your personal information?

We may collect information about you in a number of circumstances, including:

when you or your organisation seek legal or regulatory advice from us;

when we provide other services to you in conjunction with legal or regulatory advice, such as access to online data rooms, our AI tools for due diligence and discovery;

when you make an enquiry to us, including through our website;

when you attend a seminar, training presentation or other event provided by us;

when you sign up to receive information from us, such as email updates;

when you apply for employment with us; or

when you or your organisation offer to provide, or provides, services to us.

What information do we collect?

We may collect and process the following personal information:

identity and contact details, this may include your name, postal address, email address, telephone number and job title;

information regarding your preferences, such as how you prefer to receive any communication and/or marketing information from us;

details of your visits to our offices; and

any information you voluntarily provide to us.

If you are seeking employment with us, we may also collect employment related information, such as information about your education and training, previous employment history, references, health information and whether you have a criminal record.

If you do not provide personal information

If you do not provide information requested by us from time to time, we may not be able to provide services to you or otherwise fulfil the purpose for which we have requested the information.

Where we collect personal information from

Generally, we will only collect personal information directly from you or the organisation for which you work (where we provide or receive services from such organisation).

However, in some cases, we may also collect information from further third party source, such as:

where you are applying for employment with us or we are working together, from publicly available information such as Linkedin; or

where you are applying for employment with us, other organisations with which you have dealings such as current and previous employers or educational institutions and credit reporting agencies.

In addition, we collect information through our website using cookies and similar technologies. We use Google Analytics to help us understand how people use our website. For example, Google Analytics may provide us with information on how many people visit our website, what pages they visit, how people access and use our website, and other related information. Google Analytics tracks this information using cookies. We then use the information provided by Google Analytics to help us improve our website. The information we receive will not personally identify you or your actions.

You can find more information about how Google uses data when you access our website here and here. In addition, you can choose to opt out of Google Analytics across all websites you visit without impacting your ability to access our site. You can find out more information on how to opt out of Google Analytics here

More information on our use of cookies and similar technologies can be found in our Cookies Policy.

How we use your personal information

We may use your information for one or more of the following purposes:

to fulfil a contract, or take steps related to a contract, with you or your organisation including to provide you with legal or regulatory services and related services, such as access to online data rooms;

as required by us to pursue our legitimate interests, including:

to improve our services and communications to you or your organisation;

to maintain and develop our relationship with you or your organisation;

to send you or your organisation invoices or payment reminder notices;

to conduct employment related activities where you are seeking employment with us;

where required by law, including to comply with our record-keeping obligations and undertake compliance checks, for example, anti-money laundering and credit checks;

where you consent, to send you publications and newsletters, and information about seminars and events which may interest you or which relates to your interests.

When we may disclose your personal information to others

We will disclose your personal information to others only when legally permitted to do so. When we disclose personal information to others, we only do so under contractual and security arrangements designed to protect your personal information and to comply with applicable data protection, confidentiality and security requirements.

We may disclose your personal information to others in the following cases:

to other Webb Henderson offices on a confidential basis for the purpose of providing our services and administrative activities;

to other providers we may work with to help us provide professional services to you or your organisation, for example to barristers or experts involved in your matter, or other law firms with whom we partner to provide you with services;

to third parties that provide us with IT and data processing services who process your personal information in accordance with our instructions only;

to third parties who assist us in running our business or provide services to us, such as our insurers and auditors and companies providing money laundering checks, and who are subject to strict security and confidentiality obligations;

to law enforcement, government or regulatory agencies or other third parties if the law requires us to do so;

where you have explicitly consented to a disclosure to a third party.

We never disclose your personal information to third parties for direct marketing purposes.

Information about other people which you provide to us

If you provide us with personal information about someone else (such as a director or employee of your organisation) you must ensure they understand what information will be disclosed, how it will be used and that they consent to this. Without us taking any further steps, we may collect, use and disclose that information as described in this Privacy Policy.

Transferring information across jurisdictions

We may transfer personal information and data between countries for the purposes described above and to the recipients described above in accordance with applicable privacy laws relating to the transfer of that personal information and data to foreign countries.

In all cases, we will ensure a level of privacy protection for all personal information and data that meets the applicable requirements of both the European Union and Australia, even if a lower standard may be applicable under another applicable privacy law.

How long we keep your personal information

We will only keep your personal information for as long as is considered necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including as may be required by any record keeping, legal or accounting purposes.

As a general rule, our standard retention period for personal information is 7 years.

Personal information may be kept for longer periods where required by applicable law or regulation or in order to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights.

Your rights

You have certain rights in respect of our use of your personal information:

right of access: you have the right to obtain confirmation from us as to whether we process personal information about you, access a copy of such personal information and receive certain other information about how and why we process your personal information;

right to rectification: you have the right to request inaccurate personal information we hold about you is rectified and incomplete personal information is completed;

right to erasure: you have the right to obtain the deletion of the personal information we hold about you in the following cases:

where the information is no longer necessary in relation to the purposes for which they were collected;

where the information was processed only as a result of you providing consent to the processing and you withdraw your consent;

where we processed the information on the basis that it was necessary for legitimate interests, you object to the processing and we do not have overriding legitimate grounds;

where the information has been unlawfully processed; or

where we have to erase the information to comply with a legal obligation to which we are subject;

right to object and restrict processing: in certain circumstances, you have the right to object to our processing of your personal information and ask us to block, erase or restrict your personal information;

right to data portability: you have the right to receive the personal information we hold about you, or have it provided to certain third parties, in a commonly used, machine-readable format; and

right to withdraw consent: you may withdraw your consent to the use or disclosure of your personal information (fully or partly) at any time.

If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please contact us at here.

Complaints

We hope you won’t need to, but if you wish to make a complaint about our handling of your personal information, please submit your complaint in writing to the Privacy and Data Protection Officer using our contact details below.

We will endeavour to handle your complaint as soon as possible and in any event within a reasonable time frame.

For EU citizens, you have the right to complain to the data protection authority in your country of residence or the country in which you believe any infringement of data protection law may have occurred.

How to contact us

If you have any questions or comments about our Privacy Policy, please email us here